EJ Hill

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

EJ Hill is an artist whose practice incorporates painting, writing, installation, and performance in ways that seek to elevate bodies and amplify voices that have long been rendered invisible and inaudible by oppressive social structures. ​This multifaceted approach often stems from an endurance-based performance practice in which Hill pushes his physical and mental limits as a way to expand the conditions, parameters, and possibilities that determine a body.

As a Radcliffe fellow, Hill is ​working on a research and exhibition project inspired by the 17th century Russian predecessor to the roller coaster (referred to as “Russian Mountains”). This project investigates the roller coaster as symbol for the need for foundational structures, systems of support, and sources of uplift for those most vulnerable to homegrown American terrorism—a violence oftentimes enacted under the guise of patriotism.

Hill’s work has been presented domestically and internationally in exhibitions including Rendez-vous | Biennale de Lyon 2017, at Institut d’Art Contemporain, in Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, France (2017); ​Future Generation Art Prize​, at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); ​The Necessary Reconditioning of the Highly Deserving​, at Commonwealth & Council (2017); and ​Tenses: Artists in Residence 2015–16​, at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2016). Hill is the recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2018); an Art Matters Foundation fellowship (2017); the William H. Johnson Prize (2016); and a Fellowship for Visual Artists from the California Community Foundation (2015). Hill received an MFA from UCLA and a BFA from Columbia College Chicago.

At Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute, an Artist Asks High-Powered Schools to Rethink Vulnerability (Boston Globe, 3/12/20)